Managing your customer service on Twitter
Social media for businesses can be a great tool, but we can’t always control the content that is posted out there from customers, visitors or competitors, so it’s important to keep your wits about you and ensure that you monitor what is being said about you online. It takes great capability and skills to ensure your customer service is maintained to a high standard on social media.
While monitoring brand mentions and conversations relating to your industry on social media is important, it is absolutely essential in times of crisis. If you’ve made a big blunder, chances are, a lot of people in the community are buzzing about it. Social media, after all, has maximised the speed in which news travels.
Customer complaints are increasingly being channelled through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, meaning companies now have to react fast or risk the wrath of their customers’ complaints and criticisms going viral. Tweets can go viral in a simple click of a retweet.
Twitter is one of the easiest platforms to go viral on, as it only takes a matter of seconds and a few bad retweets to make content including your company’s tag go global. This is why it’s important to stay on top of your customer service. One bad customer service experience could lead to one angry customer tagging your account on their Twitter for the world to see.
Important things to keep in mind to smoothen the recovery process are:
Timing
Respond quickly. Timing is extremely important and the quicker you deal with the problem, the less time it has to spread further without acknowledgement from your company, and the less attention is drawn to your tweet for a delayed response. An example of good timing was when JetBlue took only 6 minutes to respond to a tweet, Jetblue makes sure that they engage their customer base in a fun and friendly way, that they deal with complaints or positive tweets both in a timely manner. And with over 2 million followers, you know that the good customer service work has paid off.
Provide appropriate knowledge
When responding to bad attention, ensure you approach it in a positive manner and only provide information that is true, which may not always be what the customer wants to hear. Attention to detail is key, so ensure that everything you say is relevant to your company and truthful so that you can later relay these facts to the customer.
Customer Service Account
Some businesses have separate customer service accounts so that feedback, complaints and enquiries their customer service can be dealt with separately and away from the public eye, helping to maintain their brand reputation. Guiding customers away from their main account and having a second account dedicated to their customer service usually means that people will receive faster responses while encouraging people to send them a direct message before discussing matters in detail ensures that errors remain unknown. Take a huge brand like ASOS for example and their separate @ASOS_HeretoHelp account.
A good part of social media management involves planning ahead and having a team ready to respond appropriately and perform damage control.
Keep Moving Forward
One bad complaint does not define your businesses. Once you’ve gotten your current situation under control, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and put a new and improved system into play where similar mistakes will not happen again.
If you’re looking to improve your customer service management and want a team who can help take on some of that responsibility, get in touch with a member of the Ant Marketing Team.